Marie Lys soprano, Orchestre de l’Opéra Royal, conducted by Gaétan Jarry 73:26 Versailles Spectacles CVS 168
One of the rare singers that seem equally at home in Italian or French Baroque repertoire, the Swiss soprano Marie Lys remains for me something of a paradox. Capable of exquisitely sensitive portrayals such as that of the eponymous role in Christophe Rousset’s recent issue of Lully’s Proserpine – listen here, for example, to the seductive caressing of the words, ‘no, non partir’ (do not leave me) in the second aria from Crudel tiranno Amor, HWV 97 – she is at the same time prone to force the voice above the stave to the point of it sounding ill-produced and shrill, as it does in the earlier parts of the lavishly virtuosic Il delirio amoroso, HWV 99.
Of the four cantatas with orchestral accompaniment on the disc, HWV 99, which has a text by Handel’s Roman patron, Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili, dates from 1707, being one of the few that can be precisely dated. Uniquely among Handel’s cantatas, it includes two instrumental movements. Handel scholar Ellen Harris has suggested the text involving an Orpheus-like trip to Hades by the shepherdess Clori in a quest to recover her unfaithful lover Tirsi may have a religious sub-text, which, given the sophistication of the members of the Roman Arcadian Academy, among them Pamphili, is not beyond the bounds of possibility. The performance exudes extravagance from the outset of the opening aria, which is treated immediately to a long ornamental flourish of the kind we might more reasonably expect in the da capo, where in fact it is similarly treated in what to my ears goes beyond virtuoso singing to enter a display of vulgarity also embraced by the obbligato violin. As the mood passes through frenetic visions of hell to lighter observations of the pleasures of Elysium, so Lys’s tone loses its strident edge, there being much to charm later in the work.
Un’alma innamorata, HWV 173 also dates from 1707 and has a text by Handel’s most significant Roman patron, the Marquis of Ruspoli. It has been conjectured that it may have links with a love affair Handel is rumoured to have had in Italy with the Florentine soprano Vittoria Tarquini. The composition of the cantata coincides with a visit Tarquini made to Ruspoli in June, and it is pleasing to imagine it was premiered by Tarquini on the occasion of a banquet held in her honour. The cantata takes a lighter look at love through the eyes of a young man. With its largely syllabic setting of the text, the mood of the opening aria is innocently guileless, a mood captivatingly conveyed by Lys in the opening section but rather less persuasively in the more animated central part.
The other two cantatas are less familiar. Although composed in Rome, Sans y penser is the only cantata Handel set to a French text or more accurately two French texts, being taken from two ariettes. Here the singer takes the roles of both Silvie and Tirsis in a captivatingly faux-naif exchange of alternating recitative and aria. It suits Lys perfectly, as does the lovely opening aria of Crudel tiranno Amor, sung with an alluring lack of affectation. This is a strikingly more mature cantata composed for Margherita Durastanti, one of the composer’s favourite sopranos, in London in 1721, its three arias all finding their way into Handel’s new opera Floridante, premiered at the King’s Theatre in December of that year.
Gaétan Jarry’s direction tends to emphasize the Italianate side of Handel, a legacy of the visit to Italy, of course, drawing from Versailles’ Opéra Royal orchestra playing of considerable warmth. His choice of continuo is odd, the use of cello, double-bass, bassoon, theorbo and harpsichord or organ more reminiscent of a continuo group one might expect in a French opera orchestra than a Roman ensemble. All in all, this is very definitely a mixed bag. Listen to Il delirio amoroso and you may not wish to carry on; go to Sans y penser and you are likely to be captured to the point of near rapture.
This is a delightful CD of elegantly played trio sonata movements. The surprise for readers of the EMR lies in the choice of instruments: a traverso (Jean-Pierre Pinet), a violoncello da spalla (Vincent Roth), and a pianoforte (Vincent Bernhardt).
The traverso is a copy by Giovanni Tardino of the only surviving instrument so far (2015) discovered by the famous maker Pierre-Gabriel Buffardin, who is credited with inventing the screw cap at the end of the crown and the telescoping adjustable foot-joint which made it possible to adjust the tuning. He is likely to have been a teacher of Quantz.
The copy of the Bartolomeo Christofori pianoforte by Kerstin Schwartz dates from 1995. The original – one of three surviving instruments – dates from 1726, and by this time Christofori was making his hammer heads from rolls of several layers of handmade paper, glued together; the strings were brass, with gauges not much different from Italian harpsichords. ‘The quiet, lute-like sound…’, writes Kerstin Schwartz, ‘took some getting used to, because it was such a completely different sound than what was known from the Viennese pianos of the end of the 18th century.’
The violoncello da spalla, popularised by Sigiswald Kuijken with La Petite Bande, was invented – according to Ernst Ludwig Gerber’s famous dictionary of 1792 – by J. S. Bach in Leipzig in 1724 with the aim of facilitating the bass part in difficult and fast passages. The basso continuo line before this time was normally entrusted to a kind of bass violin called a violone, sounding at 8’ pitch. This is the instrument, rather than the viola da gamba, of Bach’s earlier versions of BWV 1027, used in this performance, and a study of Bach’s reimagining of the viola part in cantata 199 in later performances reveals that it was subsequently played on a gamba and then on a violoncello piccolo. There was considerable interchangeability among these melodic instruments once we step away from our preconceived notions of ‘string basses’.
When he died, Bach’s estate included two bassetgens and two lute-harpsichords. The timbre of the pianoforte is such that when I first listened to the CD (which I always do ‘blind’ lest I be influenced by my preconceptions), I imagined that it was one of those lute-harpsichords I was hearing.
So I found the performances captivating – beautifully balanced, clear and distinctive – and utterly plausible. The booklet is a mine of information, and, as far as I can judge from my own research for Unpeeling Bach, gives a warranty for performances of these trios in this form.
Apart from these technical considerations, the performances here showcase the skills of these players and are a welcome addition to the way in which we can hear Bach’s chamber music and have our preconceptions challenged.
Opella Musica – camerata lipsiensis, directed by Gregor Meyer 8 hours 58 minutes (8 CDs) cpo 555774-2
Once in a while a recorded project transcends commercial considerations to become nothing short of historic documentation. Such is this present collection of the complete surviving sacred works of Johann Kuhnau (1660-1722), Bach’s predecessor as Kantor at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig. Its academic credentials are indeed further established by the set being produced in conjunction with a new critical edition of Kuhnau’s works by David Erler, the countertenor of Opella Musica. Publication by Breitkopf and Härtel is currently in progress. Several of the individual issues have been reviewed by colleagues Brian Clark (vol 1) and David Stancliffe (vols 3, 5 & Zittau8), but the issue of the complete set seems an appropriate moment to attempt to place Kuhnau not only in the context of his time but also that of the sacred music of Bach.
Born to a Bohemian family that fled the Counter-Reformation, Kuhnau studied in Dresden and Italy before becoming interim Kantor at Zitttauand then a law student at Leipzig University. In 1684 he was appointed organist of the Thomaskirche, practised law and also found time to direct a collegium musicum. One of the last of the great musical polymaths, in 1700 he published Der musicalische Quacksalber, a novel satirizing modern trends in music and which mentions his now-lost opera Orpheus. The following year, Kuhnau was appointed Kantor of the Thomaskirche, a position that embraced civic in addition to religious duties. He retained it until his death, composing a huge amount of music of which only a small portion is extant.
The nearly nine hours of music spread across eight CDs includes works that look back to the 17th-century religious concerto and those that remind us that the modern cantata style of Bach is close at hand. In addition, there are a handful of Latin works, including a splendid and lavishly scored – three trumpets, timpani, two oboes and strings (five-part in ,Magnificat vol 3), and ‘Spirate clementes’ an exquisitely-wrought trio for two sopranos, bass and continuo on vol 8, which also features a concluding miscellaneous group of mostly secular vocal works including strophic songs and choruses written for plays. It would obviously be impractical to attempt analysis of the 40-odd works here, so I will content myself with a few general points that come to mind after listening to the discs over a period of time. But before doing so, there are a few observations regarding the performances which strike me as being close to ideal for a project such as this. All the choral works are sung one-voice-per-part, being finely balanced both as to ensemble and against the sometimes brilliantly conceived instrumental accompaniment. A total of five voices are employed throughout the set, giving it a pleasing unity. All are highly proficient singers more than capable of sustaining the melismatic writing Kuhnau at times introduces, especially in works like the Missa brevis for bass and strings that display Italian influence (vol 4). Just occasionally, as in this work, a more rhetorical, text-based approach would have been welcome, but at least the slight degree of understatement ensures there are going to be no aggravations on repeated listening. My only other small caveat relates to the many strophic songs and choruses, where one might have expected ornamentation to provide variation in the verses. The instrumental contribution deserves nothing but praise, and overall this is a very fine achievement that deserves fulsome congratulations.
Returning to the impressions gained from this unique overview of Kuhnau’s sacred music, there is one striking aspect that contradicts the received view of his conservatism. This gained much traction from his sometimes fractious relations with Telemann, whose poaching of Thomaskirche students for opera did not sit well with Kuhnau. Yet Kuhnau himself had played an important role in the founding of the opera company in Leipzig. More importantly, his music is consistently coloured by tone-painting given a strong character by its embellishment with daubs of chromaticism. Chorale cantatas are few, but the lovely Christmas cantata ‘Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern’ (vol. 7) (also of course set by Bach in his cantata BWV 1) is an enchanting exception. So how can we relate Kuhnau to Bach, who was certainly influenced by his predecessor? For me, for all his intellectualism, arm’s there remains in Kuhnau’s music a certain element of naivety that is not applicable to Bach. His God is a more approachable being than that of Bach, who almost always remains at a majestic arm’s length.
This set, an obligatory acquisition for anyone with an interest in Baroque sacred music, comes with a booklet including expansive (but microscopically printed) essays in German and English. For English translations of the German or Latin texts, you will need to go online.
D James Ross reviews the 2026 St Magnus International Festival
It is hard to believe that this is the 50th St Magnus International Festival in Orkney, particularly as I attended the very first one as a student in 1976! I was very pleased to see a varied selection of early music in the anniversary 2026 Festival brochure – Orkney and early music seem to me to be a marriage made in heaven. The Festival’s founder Peter Maxwell Davies had a keen interest in Mediaeval and Renaissance music, and historically informed performances of early repertoire, often presented in the islands’ historical churches, have proved very popular in the past.
My first concert this year was a recital in Stromness Town Hall by the beguiling American-Armenian musician Lucine Musaelian, a singer who accompanies herself on the viola da gamba. Performing a selection of 17th-century love songs, gamba solos and traditional Armenian music, she held her audience entranced by the beauty of her singing and playing. With a bias towards female composers including Barbara Strozzi and the Caccini sisters, all composing in the attractive nuove musiche style, Musaelian also touched upon the wonderfully ornate repertoire of the virtuosic Concerto delle Donne composed by Luzzaschi as well as songs by Monteverdi. Observing that a painting, possibly representing Strozzi, shows a woman accompanying herself on the viol, Musaelian admitted a particular affinity with Strozzi, who with a striking extended song In medio maris provided her with the title for her programme.Musaelian’s formidable viol technique facilitated flawless accounts of complex but unobtrusive accompaniments representing up to three polyphonic lines, as in Cipriano de Rore’s Ancor che col partire, which she deftly followed with a set of viol divisions. Further solo viol numbers by Marin Marais and Monsieur de Saint Colombe took full advantage of the six-stringed viol and Musaelian’s impressive technique, but for me it was the songs, including the entrancing Armenian liturgical music by Nerses Shnorhali and Grigor Narekatsi and traditional tunes, which I found most enjoyable. Particularly intriguing was the way in which the traditional sobbing ornamentation and use of chest voice spilled effectively from the traditional material into the Renaissance songs, enhancing their emotional impact. While I expected to be familiar with much of the early repertoire, I was delighted with Musaelian’s consummate vocal and instrumental skills as well as the unique spin she put on the early repertoire, and as a bonus was pleased to recognize the traditional Armenian melody Hov Arek, a piece I enjoy playing on the duduk – it’s a small world!
Lucine Musaelian’s performances on voice and viol of 17th-century love songs and Armenian traditional music were a revelation.
Making a long-overdue return visit to the St Magnus International Festival after ten years, the excellent Scottish choral ensemble The Marian Consort under their director Rory McCleery contributed two programmes in as many days, a concert based on the Western Wind theme in St Margaret’s Hope Church and a programme exploring a single Scottish musical manuscript in St Magnus Cathedral. The pretty village church in St Margaret’s Hope, at which my grandfather James Louttit was an elder, has taken the brave decision to remove dingy Victorian pews and pulpit, all too familiar to me from holiday visits to the village, turning the space into a bright, flexible and above all welcoming arts venue and place of worship. Its acoustic turned out to be pleasantly intimate, ideal for the Byrd motets and four-part mass movements as well as parts of the magnificent Taverner Western Wind mass. The Consort’s performances of the Taverner had a magnificent sweep and energy which combined with their wonderfully focussed sound and pinpoint accurate intonation to produce a very powerful account. In among the 16th-century repertoire we had a selection of fine contemporary pieces, including an expressive psalm setting from Nico Muhly and Tom Coult’s Souling, a work intriguingly interweaving folkloric elements into a rhythmically rich texture. In the Marian Consort tradition we also had a world premiere by Daniel Kidan and a spectacular setting of Verbum Domini by Edmund Finnis, to my mind the finest of the wonderfully varied modern pieces. Enthusiastic applause from a capacity crowd elicited a truly lovely encore performance of John Sheppard’s meltingly beautiful Libera nos, salva nos.
The Marian Consort and their director Rory McLeery about to perform in St Margaret’s Hope Church, an attractive new venue in South Ronaldsay.
The Consort appeared again the following evening in the magnificent St Magnus Cathedral for a concert entitled The Auld Alliance, focussing on one of the handful of surviving Scottish Renaissance church music manuscripts, the Dunkeld Antiphoner. In fact, five of an original set of six partbooks are associated not with Dunkeld but with Lincluden Collegiate Church; nowadays the collection is more accurately referred to as the Lincluden or Dowglas/Fischar Partbooks, referencing two signatures in the manuscript. In addition to containing major works by important French and Burgundian masters such as Josquin, Pierre Certon and Johannes Lupi, all of whom featured in this fascinating programme, of particular interest are two six-part Masses probably by Scottish composers, although they are frustratingly anonymous in the manuscript. If the Mass Felix Anna, from which the Consort sang the Kyrie, Credo and Sanctus, lacks the flamboyance of the contemporary mass settings of Robert Carver (which incidentally may include the Mass Cantate, the other Scottish Mass preserved in the partbooks), it is an impressively rich and consistently imaginative work, given a beautifully effective account by the Consort. It is a piece I am very familiar with, having performed it several times around thirty years ago with my group Musick Fyne, and even having recorded it – I have to admit that it has further grown on me over the years, and McLeery and his Consort found unexpected depths in it, persuading me to return to it shortly! This concert was being recorded for future broadcast on BBC R3, and the Consort were on peak form for this important opportunity to reach a wider audience with this fine but neglected repertoire. Their opening account of Josquin’s powerful Benedicta es was simply exquisite, while Certon’s Inviolata was a revelation and the concluding eight-part Salve cereberrima virgo by Johannes Lupi was truly magnificent. If the world premiere of Emily Hazrati’s sâye seemed a little out of place in this programme otherwise so intensely focussed on a single 16th-century manuscript, it proved to be an intriguingly imaginative and innovative piece impeccably performed by the Consort – and a particular delight to have the young composer present to accept her share of the applause. An encore of the ubiquitous Tallis Canon proved a soothing conclusion to a memorable concert, of which the star was undoubtedly the enigmatic and eloquent anonymous Scottish Mass Felix Anna.
A group making their first visit to the St Magnus International Festival are Voces Thules, an ensemble dedicated to the exploration of their native Icelandic musical heritage. As one who has dabbled in the performance of the Norse sagas, I was looking forward greatly to their first programme, Sagas, Skalds, Songs, and intrigued as to just what they were going to be performing. We had reluctantly come to the conclusion that if the saga texts had ever been ‘performed’ it would have been in the form of dramatic declamation of the Old Norse text to the simple accompaniment of perhaps a Viking lyre – in fact, unambiguous internal evidence made it disappointingly clear that the sagas were generally ‘read’. Voces Thules, five male vocalists who double on a number of mediaeval instruments, were clearly going to take a very different approach. Drawing on the two rich traditions of the sagas and the oral tradition of Icelandic folk music, they largely combined the two in lively accounts of passages from the Sturlunga and Grettis sagas, using various combinations of voices and instruments and frequently resorting to drones and organum. The instruments ranged from a variety of drums and timbrels, a bunch of crotal bells, a primitive folk flute, a mediaeval symphony, Viking lyres and the distinctive Icelandic langspil, a simple bowed psaltery with drones and a melody string – the brief appearance of a plastic Aulos sopranino recorder was both disappointing and unnecessary. Generally speaking, the solo voices and the male voice consort were both very effective, while the instrumental element complemented the voices well. The group’s obvious commitment to their material and the energy of their performances were greeted with enthusiastic applause in a packed St Margaret’s Hope Church. Notwithstanding my reservations, I enjoyed these honest accounts of the sagas as well as the several items of Icelandic traditional music which followed, also given the distinctive Voces Thules treatment – my appetite had definitely been whetted for their second performance in St Magnus Cathedral in which they were to present early Icelandic sacred music, which I knew would be more firmly based on archival sources.
Voces Thules with a selection of their instruments in St Margaret’s Hope Church, South Ronaldsay.
After a moment of trepidation when I spotted a modern ebonite clarinet lurking among the waiting instruments, I was soon swept up in the opening group of plainchants, sung with admirable subtlety and unanimity by the five male voices. As I had hoped, this time they drew on the surviving written sources of Icelandic church music to bring us a wealth of intriguing sacred material ranging from melody and drone through organum, faburden, ars nova polyphony, compelling call and response structures and simple accompanied melodies of beguiling beauty. Remarkably, the material came exclusively from Icelandic sources from the 14th to the 18th century, with one noble exception – the iconic Hymn to St Magnus : Nobilis, humilis preserved in Norway and possibly composed there or even here in Orkney. It was given a lovely and moving performance by the group, standing in the Saint’s magnificent Cathedral not twenty paces from his mortal remains in the pillar behind them. In several pieces they used the same range of instruments to enhance the vocal textures as previously, with the addition of a tenor crumhorn and small bells. The clarinet made mercifully only one appearance, playing a simple cantus, which honestly could have been played by anything – given their otherwise admirably HIP approach, the excuse ‘I know it’s not mediaeval but it’s useful’ doesn’t really cut it! My only other criticism of an intriguing and enjoyable exploration of very unfamiliar material was the hesitant (and in the Cathedral acoustic largely unintelligible) verbal commentary as well as an occasional ‘faff’ about who does what. Again, the group’s utter commitment to their material and the brilliant idea of involving the audience in the call and response of their final processional won them sustained and enthusiastic applause. Their encore from the Sturlunga saga overlooked the fact that many of their audience would probably have attended their earlier concert – perhaps this was the point at which the Hymn to St Magnus could have achieved maximum musical and emotional effect…
Voces Thules in the ecclesiastical garb preparing to perform in St Magnus Cathedral.
My final concert at this year’s festival was a homage to the late John Wallace, whose arrangement of Giovanni Gabrieli’s Canzoni and Sonate of 1615 called The Invisible Symphony involved some thirty brass players including Wallace’s own celebrated Wallace Collection reinforced by The Cooperation Band playing an hour-and-a-half long compilation from the 1615 publication. I am a huge fan of Giovanni Gabrieli and particularly of his music for wind ensembles, so I was definitely looking forward to this programme – sadly I had more reservations about it than I had imagined. The musicians were positioned in one large circle in the centre of the nave of St Magnus Cathedral around conductor Katrina Marzella with the audience ranged in two equal blocks to the west and east of this. Essentially, notwithstanding the alternation of the musicians playing each piece, for us the sound came from the same direction, and I found my eyes straying to the many galleries, the aisles and the choir stalls, all of which could have housed musicians for the truly dramatic polychoral experience associated with St Mark’s in Venice – and surely hinted at by Wallace’s title. As it was, the conductor and perhaps the musicians were the only ones to experience the music in its full three dimensions. Further problems arose from the upper cornetto lines being assigned to trumpets – the quirky scampering figures, which work wonderfully on cornetti, sounded unidiomatic and risky on the upper brass instruments, and there were disappointingly frequent cracked and fluffed notes and a couple of car-crash moments. Sadly, the decision to stick these short pieces by Gabrieli, intended to be performed singly as an occasional splash of colour in longer liturgical contexts, into an extended suite came across as rather too much of a good thing, emphasising the relative lack of variety both of texture and performance. This is not to deny that the larger-scale pieces involving most or all of the players sounded extremely impressive in the resonant Cathedral acoustic, but to me much of the rest of the programme sounded breathless, unidiomatic – and eventually a bit tedious. The loud ovation which greeted The Invisible Symphony’s spectacular conclusion clearly demonstrated that my opinion was firmly in the minority, and to look on the bright side I am sure that this concert valuably brought Gabrieli’s remarkable music in largely unadulterated form to a whole new audience. This was just not for me, steeped in HIP accounts of this music by the likes of the Gabrieli Consort, Taverner Players and King’s Consort, and even the magnificent final peroration was tainted by the knowledge that some Wagnerian phrases had been insinuated into the texture. There was a lovely moment at the end of the concert when the five members of The Wallace Collection took their own bow – a fitting tribute to their late inspirational founder/director John Wallace.
Members of the Cooperation Band in performance in St Magnus Cathedral.
The main joy of attending a thriving international festival such as the St Magnus International Festival is the sheer variety of music on offer – even my own selective concert list, ranging from Mediaeval Icelandic secular and liturgical music, via state-of-the-art performances of Scottish and continental Renaissance and contemporary polyphony to a Venetian brass spectacular reflects the imaginative planning behind one week of events offering a truly unbelievable range of musical experiences.
For those of our readers lucky enough to be in France (whether you live there or are visiting), festival season will soon be upon us. Below are press brochures for three of the best known. Each has a wide range of events that will appeal to diverse audiences, featuring some of the leading ensembles in iconic works, as well as new groups exploring unfamiliar repertoire (or giving pieces you might know a make-over!), and entertainment for all ages, often throughout the day.
This is the debut recording by Dmytro Kokoshynskyy, a young harpsichordist from Ukraine. In the accompanying booklet he relates how music provides him with the solace he deeply needs in the most challenging moments of his life, that no repertoire has done so more fully than the music of the English Virginalists, and that it was no surprise to him that this music filled his mind when his homeland was invaded in 2022. For its evangelists and admirers, these sentiments regarding the English virginalist school of composers are both gratifying and humbling. Dmytro also refers to Robert Burton’s celebrated book The anatomy of melancholy (1621) so there is ample subtext behind his choice of repertory for this recording.
Listening to this disc was, is, for this reviewer a compelling experience, and the choice of repertory is one element that goes towards this. The other two elements are the quality of the music, and the incendiary commitment of the performances. The pieces selected from the works of the well-known composers tend to exist beneath their radars. Gibbons’s supremely melancholy and profound pavan is usually elbowed aside by the admittedly great pavan for Lord Salisbury. Byrd’s fantasia with its vestige of Salve regina chant tends to give way to his pioneering and unsurpassed fantasia in A minor. Even Tallis’s mighty Felix namque settings tend to be prioritized for the organ. That said, its emotional variety renders the programme all the more enthralling – it is not stuck in trouble and melancholy, and Dmytro mentions Burton’s reference to “a pleasing melancholy”, a form of catharsis. In the cinema, a good director has the confidence and knows when to insert a flash of comedy into a predominantly serious film, and here Dmitry includes sunnier works such as Byrd’s John come kiss me now, Wakefield on a green (incomprehensibly attributed elsewhere to Byrd) and the attractive anonymous arrangement of Dowland’s Can she excuse (its modern printed source given wrongly in the printed booklet but correctly above). Applauding in passing the five powerful pieces by Bull, it remains to mention two others, one ancient, one modern. Seemingly the anonymous A Ground receives its premiere on disc here, and this is long overdue, being a work of substantial proportions for the period and of considerable excellence. Finally, KHORA by the Ukrainian/Dutch composer Maxim Shalygin is a thrilling and passionate response to Burton’s book, its highly appropriate title helpfully explained in the booklet.
This is a fine recording which is both moving and inspiring. It manages to be powerful without being oppressive, the wonderful music anatomized beautifully by Dmytro, none more so than Bull’s pavan and galliard for Lord Lumley, so as to externalize his own profound, innermost thoughts. From the turmoil of the Reformation, the English Virginalists provide catharsis four centuries later for a Ukrainian harpsichordist contemplating the invasion of his homeland, who in turn encapsulates this in performance and transmits it for the world.
This is an exquisitely gathered selection of chamber works befittingly under the title, “Telemann in a French light”. There are no fewer than four world premieres (sonatas from the Brussels Conservatory), and several cleverly “orchestrated” pieces from the second dozen of the 36 harpsichord fantasias (1730), andmenuets taken from the two sets of 50 published in 1728 and 1730. These “transmuted” works come across with a charming ease in their new guise and fit within the overall French theme. Two of the four premiered pieces, TWV 41: e9 and G12, might be termed “Sonates en Suite”, exuding some classic elements from the French suite. The other two are just as captivating in their intimate charm and fluency; G11, although in an Italianate format, incorporates French elements, while D10 overtly follows a cantabile style, so perfect for the flute, and delightfully captured here.
The neat and ingeniously transformed fantasias and menuets add to the overall charm of this brightly recorded disc, where the trio of musicians captures the intimate nature and structure of the French taste with a relished and admirable synergy.
This is certainly one of the nicest chamber CDs I have heard for quite some time and should draw the attention of all lovers of Telemann’s chamber music. The CD booklet is well laid out and has an unusually stylish font, which is lucid and charming like the music itself.
Le Banquet Céleste, Julien Barre vc piccolo 70:30 Alpha 1190
The framing of the solo Cello Suite No 6 in D by two of Bach’s cantatas, BWV 115, ‘Mache dich, mein Geist, bereit’ and No 85, ‘Ich bin ein guter Hirt,’ is a somewhat unusual format. Alpha’s note-writer tries, none too successfully, to make spiritual connections, but more convincingly also explains the practical reason for the link. Both cantatas are among a group of Leipzig cantatas from Bach’s second cycle (1724-1725) that specify the use of the violoncello piccolo as an obbligato instrument, now considered also the most likely instrument intended for the 6th Cello Suite, though it is also possible Bach also had the viola da spalla in mind for it.
As it turns out, the performance of the Cello Suite by Julien Barre, co-principal cellist of the B’Rock orchestra, is the highlight of the CD, an extraordinarily beautiful performance of this happy, airy work. Not only does Barre produce an exquisitely nuanced timbre from his instrument, but his technique is impeccable, with cleanly defined and articulated passaggi always at the command of the music. In the opening Prelude, the outdoor spirit of the movement is perfectly captured, with braying hunting calls and the energy of the chase clearly suggested, while in the succeeding Allemande the generous spatial imagery is projected with a broad expressivity that gives this most extensive of the suite’s movements a timeless, musing quality. At the other extreme, the following Courante takes us back out into the natural world on a madcap gallop projected by Barre with virtuosic delight, while the wistful Sarabande features some splendid double-stopping and clean chordal playing. And so continues to the conclusion of this treasurable performance.
On one level, the one-voice-per-part performances of the cantatas earn high commendation, too, but they are marred by a significant flaw. BWV115 is a chorale cantata composed for 5 November 1724. From the outset, the text is dominated by rhetorical demands or commands to which the Christian must attend – ‘Mache dich, mein Geist’ (Make ready, my spirit) in the opening chorale. The following aria for alto scolds the ‘slumbering soul’ – ‘Ermuntre dich doch’ (Rouse yourself!). The only other aria, for soprano, continues the theme of man’s inadequacy in the eyes of God, ‘Bete aber auch dabei’ (But pray, too). It is, as Alfred Dürr wrote in his classic study of the cantatas, ‘conceived in vividly text-related terms’. It is, however, exactly this sense of rhetoric that is almost entirely missing from these neatly turned performances. Listen, for example, to alto Alexander Chance’s singing of that alto aria, ‘Ach schläfrige Seele, wie? ‘Ah, slumbering spirit, what?’ It is neat and capable, but diction is poor, and it lacks any real penetration of the text, so it is hardly surprising that the ear is constantly drawn from the voice to the expressive oboe d’amore obbligato of Patrick Beaugiraud.
BWV 85 dates from April 1725. It takes its topic from consideration of the famous words in the Gospel of St John, ‘I am a good shepherd’, which are quoted at the outset by the bass soloist in a kind of mixture of accompagnato and arioso. The cantata is unusual in that the four soloists come together only in the brief final chorale, the chorale in the body of the cantata being for solo soprano, here beguilingly intoned by Céline Scheen, whose bright, fresh voice is one of the pleasures of the recording. Here the rhetorical element is less to the fore, though I would still like a stronger emphasis on diction. Again, one of the great pleasures of the performance is the instrumental contribution, especially once again the violoncello piccolo, which makes a splendid obbligato contribution to the alto aria.
I’m conscious that there are many admirers of Bach’s cantatas for whom the rhetorical element, the strong impact of the words, means less than it does to others, and they will doubtless place less emphasis on the topic of rhetoric. They are likely to find few reservations. Nonetheless, rhetoric meant a great deal to Bach and his fellow congregations, and if we are to understand fully the precept and message of these timeless works, it is something that should be of importance to us, too.
Musica Gloria, directed by Nele Vertommen oboe, and Beniamino Paganini harpsichord/organ 54:47 Et’cetera 1858
Musica Gloria is a young Netherlands-based vocal and instrumental ensemble whose CD ‘Georg Österreich’s Resurrected Treasures’ I welcomed warmly on this site. For their latest recording, they’ve moved forward around 30 years to give us two of the eleven anthems Handel wrote for James Brydges, shortly before he became Duke of Chandos in 1719, during his time with Brydges as resident composer (Johann Pepusch, another German émigré, was director of music). It is sobering to recognize that, had Brydges been alive today, he would almost certainly have been destroyed by the media. He elevated his country house Cannons (near Edgware) to a magnificence rarely found in England outside of royalty by means of fraudulently siphoning off large sums derived from his time as Paymaster General. So without it – over half a million pounds – no Cannons, no Chandos Anthems, no Acis and Galatea.
The Chandos Anthems were all written for the modest forces retained by Brydges, a small chorus and instrumental ensemble (without alto voices and violas) that obviously included an outstanding oboist. Here Musica Gloria field two voices-per-part along with pairs of oboes, recorders, bassoon and strings. As with the earlier CD, there is a marked impression that oboist Nele Vertommen is the driving force of Musica Gloria. Not only are her contributions to the anthems the highlights of the performances, but her playing of the solo part in the Concerto in B flat, HWV 302a, is throughout as finely nuanced and technically as assured as could be wished for.
‘The Lord is my light’ (no 10) notably sets a text drawn from no fewer than eight psalms, and ‘As pants the hart’ (no 6), which more conservatively restricts its source material to Psalm 42, are the anthems included here. Like all the anthems, they include contrasting solo and choral verses much in the style of the French petit motet, but above showing a clear relationship with the verse anthems of Purcell, a source and influence surprisingly not mentioned in the CD’s notes. Unfortunately, the performances do not match those on the earlier disc, though they may please those wedded to the Anglican tradition rather more than they do me. Like so much of that type of choral singing, there is a distinct lack of projection and communication, the performances being more concerned with making a beautiful sound than conveying a message. Diction is poor throughout, a caveat that applies equally to solos as it does to choral work. In ‘The Lord is my light’, this point is dramatically made in the mimetic choral writing at the words ‘the earth trembled and quaked, the very foundations also of the hills’, introducing the shuddering effect first used by Lully in his Isis (1677). Here it goes for little. Tempos are not always convincing either. The opening of ‘As pants the hart’ is disappointingly deliberate and understated, so by the time we reach the second, devastating line, ‘Tears are my daily food’, there has been no sense of build-up to those strong words. Obviously, as already suggested, there will be those for whom such things matter little, and they will likely find much to enjoy in the pleasing blend achieved by the beguilingly fresh-sounding voices. But there is more to this music than we are given here, and there should have been more music given on the CD, too. In this day when 80 minute CDs are no longer the exception, a mere 55 minutes is likely to raise eyebrows. So, sorry not to give more of a welcome, but the impression left is that the performers may not have been sufficiently versed in this music to bring a natural empathy to it.
Maîtrise de Paris; Choeur de l’Opéra Royal, Consort Musica Vera, conducted by Jean-Baptiste Nicolas 68:56 Versailles Spectacles CVS164
Although the concept of spatial polychoral works for two or more choirs is particularly associated with the basilica of St. Mark’s in Venice and its many galleries that lent themselves to such works, Rome and other cities, such as Bologna, also developed a strong tradition of performing such spectacular music during the course of the 16th and 17th centuries. Throughout the period, visitors coming to Italy recorded their astonishment at the overwhelming effect that could be produced by music emanating from different locations, and indeed the chori spezzati tradition should surely be viewed as a feature of the counter-Reformation. Oddly, one country that seems to have made no attempt to create its own polychoral tradition was France. The single example of a French composer attempting to emulate it comes from Marc-Antoine Charpentier, with his Salve regina à trois choeurs and Messe à quatre choeurs. For reasons not known, Charpentier visited Rome for a three-year period during his twenties (1653-73), coming into contact not only with a wide variety of liturgical works by such masters of the polychoral tradition as Lodovico Agostini and Orazio Benevoli but also the oratorios of Giacomo Carissimi. Both profoundly affected his development as a composer.
The present disc interestingly compares the Messe à quatre choeurs with a group of works by Monteverdi, Giovanni Gabrieli, Benevoli (who Charpentier almost certainly encountered during his stay) and Agostini. The Monteverdi extracts from the 1610 Vespers, the ‘Sonata sopra Sancta Maria’ – very nicely done by the boys of the Maîtrise de Paris – or the six-part ‘Deus in Auditorium’, with its instrumental reference back to the opening toccata from Orfeo can however hardly be classified as polychoral works. Though born a generation apart, the career trajectories of Agostini (1534-90) and Benevoli (1605-72) follow a similar path, with both having studied at the Église Saint-Louis des Français in Rome. Later, both became music director of Cappella Giulia in Rome, though by that time Benevoli’s career had also taken him to a post in Vienna. The contrasting textures of Benevoli’s 24-part Dixit Dominus, as recorded in the Chapelle Royale in Versailles, seem too complex when taken at such a deliberate pace in a reverberant space, with little separation of the four choirs apparent. It should be noted that the timings for the works that proceed the Charpentier are incorrectly given in the booklet, the 1:26 given for the Agostini Magnificat, for example, more accurately timed at around 6:30.
The Charpentier mass betrays its Roman ancestry from the outset. The opening Kyrie displays the contrasts of texture and weight that are apparent throughout, the solo (petit choeur) opening featuring some lustrous singing by soprano Pauline Gaillard. Here, the entry of the other three choirs is surprisingly and unexpectedly accompanied by timpani. Anyone who has listened to the Italian pieces first will by this time know that loud timpani beats are a feature of the recording and one that conductor Jean-Baptiste Nicolas discusses at length in his notes, noting it is an experiment. Nicolas, who is a musicologist, admits that there is no historical documentation of timpanists being paid for playing church services, but points to examples in painting. Although he argues well and without being dogmatic, I cannot but feel that this is an experiment that has not been successful, indeed one that might have been better suited to a concert than the permanency of a recording. Too often, the entry of timpani comes at the cost of choral clarity or the spoiling of a moment, the most invidious being at ‘Crucifixus’, which follows a transcendent ‘Et incarnatus’, especially touching at ‘et homo factus est’ (and was made man).
I am sure there are those that will find the addition of timpani adds a sense of grandeur and there are indeed some overwhelmingly impressive moments. But I don’t think it works within the context of works that are already giving the listener a considerable aural challenge. Others may find greater satisfaction in the recording of the Charpentier mass – sung within the context of appropriate chant – made by Ex Cathedra (Hyperion, 2003), particularly since it also includes the lovely three-choir Salve Regina. There is also a version by the outstanding Ensemble Correspondances that I’ve not heard (harmonia mundi). But I’m equally sure there are those for whom the visceral excitement of the new Versailles CD will carry the day.
Lucine Musaelian’s performances
The Marian Consort and their director Rory McLeery
Voces Thules with a selection of their instruments
Voces Thules in the ecclesiastical garb
Members of the Cooperation Band
